KNOWN ISSUE: Targets for Plug-in installs are including retired machines even though the target definition should be pointing only at Active machines

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Issue

While troubleshooting another issue, the customer noticed that his target had more resources targeted to install plug-ins that it should.
After looking at those resources, the customer identified some machines were actually "Retired" or had another Status, like Out of Order, etc.

Steps to duplicate:
1. retire a machine
2. update resource membership
3. check that retired machine is no longer in All Computers filter
4. Go to one of the update or install plug-in policies, like the Install Software Update Plug-in policy,
5. Click on the default target, in this case "All computers without software update plug-in installed target"
6. Click the edit icon and click on the 'Update Results'
7. You should be able to see the retired machine as one of the results.

Creating a new target for any policy results on the same behavior where the retired machines will be counted.

Environment

Symantec Management Platform 7.1 SP2

Cause

Known Issue. Previously, many filters (including All Computers) were defined using join with vComputerResource which filters out non-active computers. With the SMP 7.1 SP2 release, the usage of vComputerResource was removed. The problem is hidden by filter UI, because filters are using resource picker-reports to display their membership and picker report for computer resources just don’t display non-active computers but they still exist in CollectionMembership table.

Solution

There is a workaround available for those still at ITMS 7.1 SP2.
You can use a modified "All Computers" filter which basically we added a JOIN to vComputerResource. It worked just fine for the customer. The number of computers in the filter “All Computers without Software Update Plug-in Installed Target” has dropped as expected, showing just active machines.

These were the steps suggested:
1. Download the attached "All Computers_Modified.xml" file
2. Open the SMP Console and under Manage>Filters, find the "All Computers" filter and do a right-click>export and save it somewhere of your preference (just to have a copy of your original filter)
3. Now do right-click>import so the modified "All Computers" can replace the original one.
4. Go to the policy that you noticed issues with the Target totals and open the Target and click on 'Update Results". Now you should see less machines displayed, which should be just the Active ones.
5. In order to refresh the Targets totals, you need to run "NS.Complete Resource Membership Update" under Task Scheduler on your server or go to 'Settings>Notification Server>Resource Membership update' in the SMP Console and run 'Complete Update Schedule'.

You can use the modified filter xmls also attached to this article where we commented out this line --JOIN vRM_Computer c ON c.[Guid] = a._ResourceGuid and change the query to JOIN vComputerResource c ON c.[Guid] = a._ResourceGuid